A Writer's Process: Tiggy Hayes

I sneak downstairs usually in the dark like a naughty nosy child, warm up my conservatory and sit at the table.  

I have no lights on (except from the computer screen) and the windows look south (with east – west views) over a field and common land full of trees.  

The only company I allow, and is around at this precious time of the day is the dawn chorus from the multitude of birds that I always hear but never see.   The sun rises all round me and usually begins with a cacophony of sound from the birds, followed by streaking lights as the sun hits the horizon until I have a clear beautiful morning.  Today it is frosty and shining.

My current project is draft 6 or 7 of my book Memories, I hope to have published but have spent years editing. I wrote this as a skeleton for my first NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) in November 2010 but struggle with the editing of it.  I have had some fabulous feedback from beta readers and an agent who insisted I send it out rather than self-publish, she unfortunately took the wrong genre and it was not ready at the time.  I am nearer that stage now and would like to send to an agent this year.  

I am also looking back at my recent 2015 NANOWRIMO story line (Destination; a historical novel).    My husband cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats last autumn and I went as support for him in the car.  I used my time to create a historical journey visiting places my character might pass through.  Normally I would not look at this one for some years, 2 others waiting in the drawer, but I am working on an historical fiction course and this is providing the subject matter.    I have many other projects on the go; short stories mainly with an ever hopeful plan to sell them to womags, but the market for this is reducing and the pools of extraordinarily good writers increasing; I will have to keep writing.

Once I am on a roll, I find the writing really easy - I can write a skeleton in just over a month but I do live, breath and sleep the characters.

I am an avid fan of NANOWRIMO and find this an incredible way to allow a story to develop in its own manner.   I write short stories easily as well usually in a few days.  I do a little bit of planning and this then allows the words to tumble out.  Getting them down on the computer screen or paper quick enough is usually my problem.  I don’t know where the words come from and I often find I have a different ending or a new twist that was not in my planning at all.  The rough draft is usually good content but needs a lot of work to bring it up to readable material.

Editing! Editing!  I can go back and re-read something and tweak the grammar etc… but find it difficult to re-write bits. 

 I hate having to cut out the crafted words even when they don’t go….sometimes less really is more but I struggle.   I re-read and re-read but really find it difficult to read the words on the page as opposed to the words in my head (that should be on the page).  Time away from the project does help on this one.

I am a fan of Swanwick Writer’s School which I hope to return to again this summer.  I come away from the week feeling so inspired and really at one with the world, having people around me who thrive on words as well and do not regard me as weird!   I belong there and meet so many fantastically creative people who encourage, challenge but never make me feel inferior.

My biggest obstacle is I lack confidence in my own ability to write but I do enjoy the past time and love being immersed with a project. 

I write under the name of Tiggy Hayes and post to my blog; Dawn Chorus, not as often as I should.    

https://tiggyhayes.wordpress.com

A Writer's Process: Sebastian Lander

I don’t know whether I should call my writing a process – it’s more a linguistic version of throwing paint at a canvas when I have the time, and inspiration deigns to drop in.

I write sporadically, often at the kitchen table, even though we have a quiet studio at the end of the garden. Being in a space where there’s the opportunity for distraction somehow lends energy to my writing. And I can always put my fingers in my ears when I need to focus.

Sometimes I tap at my laptop in bed, reference books spread around me. It feels indulgent, an emotion I am ironically trying to indulge. My writing has the tendency to slip down the list, in favour of seemingly more productive priorities.

 

I have worked with words for a number of years. That question, ‘Have you got a book in you?’ has long been in the back of my head and, on occasion, on other people’s lips.

It’s only now that I am trying to get that book out, and I don’t even know if it will be any good.

Currently I am researching and writing about a character in Elizabethan England. The research part threatens to stretch endlessly into the future, unless I am careful. Meanwhile, fact and fiction are locked in a gladiatorial wrestling match in my head, fact holding itself up as truth and fiction championing freedom. I am learning to make room for both.

I try to visit as many places as I can which will enable me to resurrect the past. Lines pop into my head and I write them on my iPhone, puzzle pieces to be later worked up into a hopefully faithful 16th century picture. When I am writing, I light an incense stick. For me, the smell evokes everything Tudor, bringing with it the nostalgia of childhood visits to historic houses.

 

I find that I have lots of ideas and can really visualise how I want my writing to read in my head. When it comes to fingertips on keys, it doesn’t always match up.

And then I start labouring over the language, which can weigh it down.

I have fixed on finishing my book by the time I am 40. Just completing it will be an achievement in itself, let alone anything else. Hopefully, those splodges on canvas will eventually take some sort of meaningful form.

A Writer's Process: Andy Stevens

Great! I’ve the whole day off to write.

I’ll open up Final Draft and finish that knock-out script I’ve been working on. In a few days’ time, I’ll send it off to the BBC Writers Room. That’s a mere formality though, isn’t it? It’ll get snapped up, they’ll appoint someone famous to direct the show for the telly - like Stephen Frears. I’ve got it all planned out – late night BBC4 slot at first then over to prime time BBC2. The Baftas and the Golden Rose of Montreux will follow then off to Hollywood to negotiate with Netflix to produce an American version with plenty of canned laughter!

I’ll make a coffee first though.

This coffee’s good. Those little pods that come through the post from that exclusive Coffee Club are wonderful. They give just the right amount of va, va, voom to get one started. You know what, while I’m savouring this coffee, I’ll log in to ‘BBC Listen Again’. I’ll quickly catch up with ‘In Our Time’ and ‘Round Britain Quiz’ to sharpen up the grey matter prior to opening Final Draft.

Wow, I actually got two questions right in ‘Round Britain Quiz’.

OK then, let’s get started! Oh, wait a moment, it’s 1100 now and I’m feeling a bit peckish.

I could kill a p-p-p-p-penguin right now. Let’s quickly see what’s in the biscuit tin. Good Lord, it looks like Mrs Draco has taken austerity to heart and expanded its coverage to include biscuit procurement – there are only bloody Malted Milks in here! Things will be very different once I’ve submitted this script. Until then, I’ll have another coffee and dunk this Malted Milk.

Right, OK, I’m back in front of the computer and ready to…blimey, there’s a Siskin on the feed station outside my window, I must get a picture of it for my year list.

Bugger, it flew off! If I want it to come back, I’ll have to fill up the feeders and hang some fat balls – it shouldn’t take too long.

I fed the birds but unfortunately Mrs. Beasley from next door heard me – she can talk the back legs off a diplodocus…and she did.

Oh dear, it’s lunchtime. I’ll make a cheese sandwich then sit back down at the computer.

There was something I needed to do today…what was it? Catch up with ‘Happy Valley’ on iPlayer? Or was there something else?

A Writer's Process: Bridget Holding

Written on 20th March 2016

Today has been a perfect writing day. In that I have arrived at the evening with a real sense of satisfaction. The poem may not be finished, but it knows where it’s going.

Writing on a Sunday is sometimes more productive than during the week. Probably because all those small administrative things that usually niggle at me, seem to have no sway at the weekend. It’s the day of rest after all. Not that writing is exactly rest. It can be hard work. But it nourishes me.

This morning I awoke without an alarm at around seven, and had the start to the day that is most conducive to my writing process. I lay in bed a while, seeing what was present for me in terms of feelings and body sensations. 

Today is the spring equinox, and I knew I wanted to write something on that subject. However, I know from experience that if I don’t let what’s already there be heard, then that will block other expression.

Sometimes I just brainstorm on to a piece of paper with words about ‘what’s in the way of my writing today’.  However, today, there was one strong theme.  Sadness. So I made a cup of tea, propped myself up with pillows, and wrote down the words that wanted to come from that place of sadness. I was blessed with a strong image, so that helped me to find a path of self-expression from the feelings.

Once I was up, showered and breakfasted, I looked at information on some of the themes around the equinox, on the internet. I always feel a little like this is not what a poet is meant to do, but I’m enjoying bringing some astronomy and physics into my poems on ‘the turning year’. I like that specificity. It’s grounding my work.

What really sets me on fire as a poet is building a path from the microcosm of the movements of my own inner experience (body sensation and feeling particularly) to the macrocosm of the movements of nature, or the universe, or other abstract themes.

Aristotle said (I’m paraphrasing) that ‘the greatest of thing of all, is to be a master of metaphor’ I aim at that. Why not aim high! So, I found in the information and videos of the earth moving round the sun, some movement words that allowed me to feel that rhythm in my own body.

Then I stashed some paper and a pen, and my phone, into my coat pocket, and went for a walk. I’m lucky enough to live in the foothills of the Pyrenees. I walked two hours up a mountain, which really feels like going into the wilds.  I tried to feel into my animal self. Not to think, but to stay with the embodied experience of walking, alert to my environment, taking in sensory impressions. As words came to me, I jotted them down. I returned with two pages of hand written notes on various facets of my subject.

I ate lunch and took a siesta. Sleep for me, is like a wave clearing the beach. When I awoke I was in my body, and ready to go back to the poem.

I’ve been happy with today’s poem from the beginning. It found a form and shape immediately. I knew the pace, where to put the reader’s attention, the outline of it, from the outset. So today has been about filling that outline in.

This afternoon’s work (I meant to work two hours this afternoon, but worked four) has been about two things.

First, I’ve been doing small physical movements to feel deeper into the moments of movement in the planet I describe in the poem. Sometimes I might, for example, repeat a small tilt of my hips, which mirrors the tilt the earth makes in my poem at the equinox, perhaps fifty times. The words rise up from that embodied experience. If I am patient enough to wait and be with it.

The second thing I did this evening, when I had a good-enough first draft, was to consciously bring all the senses into the poem- I want the reader to smell, touch, taste, hear, and see the colours. That took some time. And some thinking myself back to the experience of walking this morning.

And then there were some internet facts to check too. Quite a few as the poem seems to be expanded to a story about three countries (not to mention the planet as a whole!)

Although I was hoping to write this poem in a day, it’s not finished. As quite often happens, it’s turning into a longer poem than I had intended, and is taking longer than I hoped.

It’s hard work too. Somehow I forget that between writing each poem.  Stringing words together on a mountain top, is really just the beginning of the day.

I realised at the end of this afternoon, that I need to bring the spring mountain flowers more alive to the reader. And the sensory impressions aren’t quite there. To do that I might have to walk back up the mountain again sometime this week, and bring some back.

I’ve going to put it online anyway. We are writers sharing the process, after all.

I’ll sleep soundly tonight.  In touch with the wild.

You can read my poem 'Spring Equinox-March 2016' also on this blog.

A Writer's Process: Sophie van Llewyn

I love to write on the huge couch in my living room, with my computer in my lap, reclining my back on the multitude of soft pillows .

However, that isn’t really an option any more since I became pregnant , so minor adjustments have had to be made.

When do I write? Being a doctor, my schedule is quite chaotic. During vacations, I write 4-6 hours per day, but when I have to work, I am only able to write on week-end for a few hours.

I find writing a very rewarding experience and sometimes I manage to enter that state when I am ‘on a row’ and the ideas keep flowing. I often try no to be over-conscious about my writing and let my unconscious do the job, too, with very surprising results. Not once had I looked at the computer in front of me after committing something to paper and wondered ‘Where did that come from?’

The greatest surprise was the ending of my novel.

First of all, my leading character ended up in a totally different place than what I had expected as I began to write the book, and second , she did something which I didn’t entirely approve of.

I had invested certain qualities and features in her, and at some point in the story, she began doing whatever she wanted and not what suited me. However, this only made me happier with the final result. My character was so strong and came to be so alive in my mind, that she actually did things her way, in the end.

I sometimes find it difficult to choose the perfect words in order to convey an idea I have in my mind.

At times, I feel that the words I have written don’t accurately express the idea I had formulated in my head. I encounter this difficulty most often when I am confronted with descriptions, landscapes, interiors, dress or countenance. I often find that the words on the computer screen don’t do justice to the Idea as I saw it with my mind’s eyes, and I find that incredibly frustrating.

I should probably mention at this point that English is a foreign language to me,

but if you would ask me now if I find it hard to write in English, I would say no. I believe that writing in my maternal language would be just as hard/easy (it is all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?)  Of course, it was difficult in the beginning, I really had trouble with the phrasing, but approx. 200,000 words later, I can’t say that I find it straining anymore. I have read somewhere , years ago , that people express themselves with far more clarity in a foreign language, because they have to search more consciously for their words. I can tell you now, from my own experience, that the statement is true.

sophievanllewyn.wordpress.com

A Writer's Process: Robyn Curtis

My poem Climbing Kimber has been through various incarnations, one a bit too flabby, one too pretty, too gritty ... yet there it has stayed, the sky, the moor, the grey stone and rich heather and peat.

Kinder Plateau is my second home - after the downs of the Isle of Wight - and there it was the sea that fed the steel clouds and wind. But now living further north, limestone gives way to granite and some days only the tops and edges above the Edale valley will do.

I often start poems with an image from nature, usually on a walk which becomes a slow process if it's one of those days when I am stopping to scribble in my notebook every ten steps! I carry a small notebook that slips into a pocket and a soft pencil. I have become addicted to 3B pencils and their feel on the paper so nothing else feels right, though in extremis anything that makes a mark will do.

Images sometimes spark a personal memory - more often provoke a feeling which can take shape in the image. Although the sense in my poems is often of sadness, it is rarely exclusively sad because making an image, especially from nature, both gives the sadness expression and surprises us with a deeper joy, from both being in nature and in the act of creating itself.

I didn't write for many years;  like many of us, not listening to myself in the throes of family and career.

But I careered out of all that a number of years ago and have been coming to terms with health limitations alongside a deep need for self-realisation - said so often but it's so true, that if you are not doing what you feel you are meant to do, or being who you are meant to be, how can you find contentment?

So here I am in a new way of life: kids left home, obliging husband who gives me all the space I need and carries my lunch and camera up the hills; I have the luxury of a room to myself at the moment but that could change soon with enforced downsizing. I feel I could do without almost anything except a big table covered with art stuff that I just play with and my own room, however tiny, for just being alone in.

I don't actually write much in this room. I type things, amend things, play around, lie on the couch, talk to the cats - and I find all that 'nothing' time is vital for any creative process to grind into action somewhere out of awareness.

Then the writing, first draft, amendments, better wording, next level of ideas - all tend to pop into my head on the train, in a cafe, in the bath - I am looking for a waterproof writing set up for making notes in the shower!

So this poem comes after some considerable heartache dealing with the fallout from loss and trauma,

and earlier drafts featured heavily the gravestone/gritstone and running dark streams ... but as it evolved the moorland birds and sky and the great freedom and hope they bring would not be left out and I was so happy to find that I did actually feel I could live in both places -the darkness we must all navigate at times as well as the airy and magical spaces of the world and when you are up high you can really be with the birds there.

Thanks to Wild Words for giving me the opportunity to share with like minded writers - I am quite a beginner tip-toeing into the world. Good luck to everyone. 

A Writer's Process: Lucy Whetman

 

‘English Girl’ is part of a longer project about time I spent living in Greece.

When I read Bridget’s prompt for the competition I thought it summed up what this section is about. I reworked the piece in the light of the entry guidance about bringing in ‘the wild’ and that helped to strengthen it.

I like to write about real-life experiences because I want to understand why certain times and events hold such significance for me. Trying to create a coherent account of what happened, and why, forces me to make sense of it in order to communicate it in words on the page. With this story in particular I wanted to show the excitement of arriving in a new country and the way that an unfamiliar culture taught me to see myself and my life differently. From the moment I landed I began to change.

What gets in the way when I write is my own critical side.

My job is as a sub-editor means that this gets plenty of use, so it is challenging but fun to use a different part of my brain, to let go of any pressure to produce something that is ‘right’ first time, and be surprised by what does come out. When I look back at old drafts of this piece and notice how much it has changed, I may think that the latest version is best but I know that it would not exist without the previous ones.

If I get stuck when I am writing, I make myself stop and go for a walk or a bath. I love what pops into my head when I am no longer thinking about it.

What helps is useful feedback and any encouragement, especially from other writers. I like reading the work of other developing writers, particularly memoirists. Hearing people’s own individual stories written in their own words is fascinating.

I do not know what will happen next with this project.

The process itself motivates me. I want to find out what this memoir will become, and I enjoy the feeling that I am learning and improving as a writer.

At the moment I am altering the structure and the memoir is expanding. I have discovered that the main theme is not what I originally thought it was, which is great because the new theme is much better.

A Writer's Process: Ann Palmer

Decades ago, I initiated the teaching of Creative Writing at several Colleges of Adult Education. My two qualifications: a primary teaching certificate and publication as a children's short story and article writer.

Back then, no guidelines existed for Creative Writing teachers.  Fortunately I like experimenting with creativity.

My reasoning was that the first word of the course was creative and all my students could write anyway. I ordered thirty books on Creative Writing from the States and quickly became fascinated by right brain led methods.

One student, a rocket-scientist, (really!) doodled all over his file while I talked. Eventually I asked Mark why he doodled. Mark told me it kept him switched on in boring lectures! That is, it kept his whole brain engaged; the doodling ensuring his right brain was activated.

A few years after this, I wrote my book on Creative Writing – 'Writing and Imagery: How to deepen creativity and improve your writing'. 

I had to change my pen-name to A.J. Palmer, the male look-alike, as the publisher believes male authors carry more academic credibility than women!

Today I am an eco-lyricist. I put eco-lyrics to well-known and much loved songs, carols and hymns. As my EcoCarols project had attracted global educational interest, I decided the next stage was to work up a musical script. It was to consist video-clips to expand on the lyrics of fifteen EcoCarols.  I knew how to do this.

On a playwriting course, we were asked to produce fifty action images to kickstart the creative process. So the method was familiar. Yet, for a whole year I put off doing it. The fact I had written a book on the power of imagery as a fantastic aid in the writing process (backed up by the experience of a rocket scientist who went on to earn a six figure sum for his fantasy trilogy) didn't seem to make any difference. Unsurprisingly, the longer I put it off, the bigger the block became. I willingly tackled other writing projects, rather than face that big block!

So, my advice is a threesome. Stay open-minded. Draw or otherwise engage your right brain. If a block feels big, remember the adage: the bigger the block, the greater the breakthrough.

It's a lesson I am relearning right now!

                                                                                                         http://www.gaiadancebooks.com/